First Year Experience News - 2016

A cohort of 203 students have been selected as Associate Advisors to support the freshman Class of 2020. Associate Advisors are an integral part of the First-Year Advising Network, which is composed of faculty advisors as well as advising consultants from the Office of Undergraduate Advising and Academic Programming (UAAP). As the number of faculty advising freshman continues to rise, the UAAP empowers Associate Advisors to support the faculty, ensuring that every advising group is built upon a solid foundation.

Every four years, the summer Olympics brings together different people and teams from around the world to work towards a common goal—becoming Olympic champions. This year’s Orientation program used an Olympics theme to welcome 1,110 first-year students to MIT and show them that by working together as a team, they can truly succeed here.

In one of the last weeks before the official start of classes, 25 incoming MIT freshmen learned about their new undergraduate home — both on- and off-campus — in a pre-orientation program with a special focus on energy. The MIT Energy Initiative-led program, called Discover Energy: Learn, Think, Apply (DELTA-FPOP), was designed as an interactive introduction to topics from wind energy to nuclear power and climate policy — with group bonding activities throughout the week.

A sign above the door says it all: MakerLodge. Here MIT students build things: a four-legged robot, a zoetrope, a gumball machine, an alpha particle spark detector. In fact, a group of them helped build the makerspace itself this summer.

MIT’s "Maker Czar" Martin Culpepper says the students, known as MakerLodge mentors, are at the core of any successful makerspace. The key, adds Culpepper, is for safety-minded and skilled students to help build not just the space, but a community.

Each year, the Office of Undergraduate Advising and Academic Programming recognizes the accomplishments of the freshmen class. This year, six members of the Class of 2019 were acknowledged for their contributions to MIT.

The 78 students who will serve as this summer Orientation Leaders have been selected, and have already started to welcome the MIT Class of 2020. Many of the Orientation Leaders volunteered at Campus Preview Weekend, helping pre-frosh with luggage check-in, serving as hosts, and assisting with small group icebreakers at the student welcome event.

Over IAP 2016, the Office of Undergraduate Advising and Academic Programming hosted a series of events for first-year students. The first of these, Departmental Exploration (DEX), was a weeklong series designed to help freshmen explore different academic opportunities as they begin to think about declaring a major this spring.